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Meeting Announcement – February 2019

PSSCC Members and Friends,

Whoa Nelly!! What a bunch of snow!! As I write this, there are eight inches of winter wonder piled up in my backyard, and it’s still coming down.  I hope someone is brave enough to capture some of this in 3D for next week.

Which reminds me, our February meeting is coming up next week. It seems early this month just because the way the weekends fall, but next Saturday will be the third Saturday of the month. I trust the weather will be better then, but keep on the lookout. If the meeting had been scheduled for today, we’d have to cancel. We’ll reassess the weather as the weekend gets closer. Watch this space for cancellation notices. Hopefully the region will be snow-free by next weekend. 

Which reminds me that I need to remind everyone that we’re looking for great images of our region for the NSA slideshow advertising our 2020 convention here. As Phyllis announced at our last meeting, the convention will be held at the Hotel Murano in Tacoma August 10-17, 2020. We are planning trips to Rainier, Seattle Center,  the fish toss at Pike Place Market, Chihuly Garden and Glass at Seattle Center, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, America’s Car Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum. Any more ideas? Please share them at the meeting next week. 

Which reminds me, next week our regular contest theme will be “Night” which is one of my favorite themes of the year. I’m looking forward to this contest. Night shots offer terrific opportunities for creativity and experimentation. And novelty is spice of life…

Which reminds me: Food! Let’s bring some yummies! Here’s the sign up sheet.

Stay safe and warm this week. We’ll see you all next week.
David

By |February 9th, 2019|Club Meetings|Comments Off on Meeting Announcement – February 2019

September Meeting Notes

In case you couldn’t make it to our September meeting, here’s a quick recap of the important news:

  1. Phyllis Maslin announced that the club had committed to hosting the 2020 NSA National Convention. Phyllis and Greg Perez have been laying some groundwork and, while nothing is settled yet, it appears the convention will be held in Tacoma which is more affordable, has good facilities for conventions, and has plenty of local interest right downtown. The dates are also not firmed up, but will probably be in July or August, 2020. During this year, our club will be expected to put together a stereo presentation of photo highlights of the area to show at the 2019 NSA convention to advertise. Also, start thinking about some local destinations that would be good for tours.
  2. Brian  Hogan is once again collecting dues for the this season. Please bring cash or check for $30 to the next meeting, or reach out to Brian directly to make arrangements.
  3. Our first meeting in our new Kirkland location was pretty good. The room is just big enough, the chairs are comfy, and with our new blackout shades, it’s plenty dark. The kitchen is also great. However, it’s a little hard to find the room, so if you haven’t been yet, I recommend parking on State Street. Look for the playground equipment. We’re in the ground floor room right next to the playground. Most of our regular team came, but despite a strong interest on Meetup.com, we didn’t have any Meetup folks show up. Maybe next time.
  4. Special congrats to Stewart Turley who swept 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in our September photo contest. Great images!
  5. We spent some time at the end of the meeting looking at Adobe Lightroom and how it can be helpful working with stereo images. Next time, in October, Stewart has volunteered to give us a demo of On1 software which is his preferred tool. 
  6. Next month, our photo contest theme will be Abstract. Also in October is the first of our three annual ISCC contests. Bring your best stuff! We’ll be picking six images to submit for judging in the national contest. Please note that this year (finally) ISCC image size has changed to the more standard 1920x1080x2. I haven’t updated the details on the website yet, but I will before our next meeting.
By |September 12th, 2018|Club Business, Club Meetings|Comments Off on September Meeting Notes

2018-2019 Season Announcement

Big Changes for PSSCC

Well, another season begins next weekend! Oh my goodness! I’m sorry for the late announcement, but summer got away from us and we had some genuine work to do to get ready for this year, so we’re a little late getting the word out.

This is going to be a historic season for us, and one of the most interesting seasons for a long time. Gone is our familiar old home in Federal Way, but this year will bring us a whole new range of opportunities.

  • New contest themes
  • New meeting content
  • New meeting location
  • New meeting schedule
  • New outreach opportunities

Contest Themes

Let’s start with our contest themes (listed also on our website contest page). These themes were suggested by our members and voted on in our June meeting, last season. There are some challenging themes here, so start planning ahead.

  • September: Summer Share / Open
  • October: Abstract
  • November: Perspective
  • December: Cha Cha
  • January: Reflections
  • February: Night
  • March: Culture
  • April: Series (3-7 sequential images)
  • May: Nature
  • June: Open

New Location

After at least two years of discussion on the issue, we’ve finally made the move to a location closer to Seattle. It’s still not in Seattle, but we hope it’s close enough to attract some additional members.

Meetings will be held at Northlake Unitarian Universalist Church, located at 308 4th Ave S, Kirkland, WA 98033. 

Here’s a Google Maps link: https://goo.gl/maps/YBu3h32jMBs

Here’s a link to the church floorplan: http://northlakeuu.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Northlake-Rental-Map.jpg

We’re in Adams Hall (the big one in the center).

Parking is easy in the church lot. Just take the stairs down to the lower level, beneath the main church hall. For anyone with mobility concerns, we suggest you park on State St. to avoid stairs.

New Schedule

For the remainder of 2018 we’ll continue to meet on the SECOND SATURDAY of the month. Then, beginning in January 2019, we’ll meet on the THIRD SATURDAY of the month.

Here’s the proposed schedule at this point:

  • September 8, 2018
  • October 13, 2018
  • November 10, 2018
  • December 8, 2018
  • January 19, 2019
  • February 16, 2019
  • March 16, 2019
  • April 20, 2019
  • May 18, 2019
  • June 15, 2019
  • July – Summer break, no meeting
  • August – Summer break, no meeting

I’d like to suggest some possible adjustments or additions to this schedule to include some evening meetings later in the season in order to try to do some outreach to other clubs, but we can discuss that more during our meetings.

New Outreach

Speaking of outreach, we’re live with Meetup now. See our profile page here: https://www.meetup.com/Puget-Sound-Stereo-Camera-Club/ Please sign up for Meetup (free) and join our PSSCC group there. The Meetup profile was announced to photo enthusiasts throughout the region today (8/27) and after only a few hours we already have 7 members signed up as interested. Only two of those are current club members.  They may not all come, but Meetup seems to be working pretty well so far!

The Meetup membership costs us $10 a month. That allows us to advertise our club meetings and show some information about the club. The first 6 months are 50% off, so we’ve only paid $30 so far. Our club meeting is then visible to anyone in the region looking for photography related events.

New Meeting Content

At our June meeting we agreed we’d like to see more educational information as a regular part of our meeting agenda. Some of the ideas suggested were:

  • Workshopping Images (each member can bring one image to solicit feedback from the group)
  • Software demos for StereoPhoto Maker, Photoshop, OnOne, Lightroom, and Magix Movie Edit Pro.
  • Editing examples to show before/after techniques, and how to get more “oomph” out of your images.

We don’t have a schedule yet for our educational programs for the season, but I have always wanted to show the club how Lightroom can be used effectively for 3D photo editing. I’ll put something together for our September meeting. Hopefully in September we can get some additional programs scheduled, at least for the next couple of meetings. If you’d like to volunteer to show us a trick, tip or technique, we’d all like to hear about it.

Workshops/Critiques: Personally, I’d love to see a workshopping discussion as part of every meeting. If you have an image that you’d like to get feedback on, bring it along. We can discuss possible technical and/or aesthetic improvements.

 

I hope you all got a chance to take some interesting photos over the break, and chalked up a few good stories to tell too. I’m looking forward to the familiar faces, but I expect new ones to be a regular occurrence for us from now on, and our content should keep that in mind. We should be prepared to cover some basics in every meeting. 

See you all very soon.

By |August 27th, 2018|Club Meetings|Comments Off on 2018-2019 Season Announcement

March Meeting Wrap Up

Our March meeting was another outstanding showing with a lot of good images in our contest (Opposites) and a lot of additional work shown besides. A special shout out to Rabih Aboujaoude, our long lost member who wandered to New Mexico and got stuck. 🙂 Rabih won first place in our Opposites contest and landed two second place images besides (in our multi-way tie for second place.)

The slide show of work from David Hagan was also a big hit. If you missed our meeting, you owe it to yourself to see his work on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dddhazan/albums His collection of over 1100 outstanding images is an inspiration. His work is all in anaglyph format, so grab a pair of red/cyan glasses and go explore. 

Here’s one more thing worth sharing, an article on creating depth in art and photography with cues other than stereoscopic perception. https://zevendesign.com/creating-depth-art-photography

Next month we have an interesting topic for our contest: Superstitions. Wow, that will be interesting.

See you then.

By |March 14th, 2018|Club Meetings|Comments Off on March Meeting Wrap Up

December Meeting Announcement

wedding cake on table at reception

I hope everyone enjoyed a happy Thanksgiving last week. The holidays are upon us, as is the stormy weather. I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors these days, and much of it on my computer working on my image editing skills. I’m learning Adobe Lightroom, and practicing a new technique called Exposure Blending. As soon as I’m good enough at either of them I’ll share some info with the club. 

However, before we get to that, I want to give a little update on what hasn’t happened regarding our move out of Federal Way. I’ve made a connection with the Seattle Photographic Society, and I’m getting closer to getting some details about that nice church in north Ballard with the full basement and the kitchen. However, there’s not much to share yet. Thanksgiving week sort of got in the way, but I hope to have specific details for our next club meeting.
 
And, speaking of club meetings, this is one of those months when the second Saturday comes before you know it. It’s on Dec 9th, which is only two weeks away.  Our PSSCC photo contest theme: Events. And of course: Food Sign Up (you know the drill).
 
Just for convenience, here are the contest themes for this year:

2017-2018 Contest Themes

  • September: What I did last summer
  • October: Demonstrations
  • November: Doors, knobs and windows
  • December: Events
  • January: Letters
  • February: Neon signs
  • March: Opposites
  • April: Superstitions
  • May: Round/Circles
  • June: Open Theme
We don’t pick for the ISCC this month, but according to our website information we should be planning to do that in January, so keep it in mind.
 
To anyone not able to join us in December, have a wonderful holiday season. See you next time.
 
Happy Holidays, 
Hope to see you on December 9th.
By |November 26th, 2017|Club Meetings|Comments Off on December Meeting Announcement

November Meeting Announcement

Heads Up! Next weekend is our monthly meeting. 

This month our club contest theme is “Doors, Knobs, and Windows” which is a pretty rich topic with lots of options. 

This month our club lunch theme is food. Everyone likes food! Here’s a link to the food sign-up page to volunteer to bring a thing: http://psscc.org/food-sign-up/ 

At our last meeting we had a good conversation about moving to a new location closer to Seattle. We’ll spend more time talking about a move at this month’s meeting as well. Don Munsil is heading up the research, and anyone with ideas or suggestions is welcome to share. 

This month, I did a little research myself and looked up photography clubs on MeetUp.com. I attended one of the photography club meetings that’s advertised on that site, and I learned a number of things. First, MeetUp.com is a good place to publicise our club in order to attract new members. The club organizers at the event I attended said they regularly get new members through that site. I started creating a profile for our club but stopped when I got to the costs: $10/month. That is a good investment if it brings in a few new members a year, but I thought we might want to wait till we get to our new location to consider it. Anyone who finds us through that site may not be interested if we’re too far from Seattle. On the other hand, if we’re close to where they live, it might be a disappointment if we plan on moving away soon. It can wait till we settle on a place. Secondly, I learned that there are a lot of active photography clubs, and they’re all meeting somewhere. So it’s a rich source of ideas for venues if we find we’re still looking. Those same photo clubs are also a good place for us to do outreach by doing a 3D photo demo as part of their regular club meeting. We could get new members that way too.

As my work schedule starts to get under control, I’ve had a little extra free time lately. Once again I’ve been looking into ways to share our photos online easily. I still haven’t found an easy way to display our photos attractively, with proper attribution, in a format that’s usable by everyone, without a lot of manual intervention. The page I started for our contest winners proved to be just too time consuming for me to keep up with. But I still would like to show off our work somehow. I’m still looking for a solution, but there’s one thing I can do that’s pretty easy. I can create a Club Member Links page that links to our members’ online photo sites. If you use Flickr or 500px or some other sharing site, and you want to add a link to your online photos on our PSSCC site, just send me a link to your page and I’ll add it. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a manageable solution for everyone, including those who may not use photo sharing websites.

The weather this weekend promises to be snowy and cold. Take care everyone! We’ll see you next week.

By |November 4th, 2017|Club Meetings|Comments Off on November Meeting Announcement

September Meeting Wrap-Up

PSSCC Members and Friends,

Our season opener was eventful. Here’s a brief summary of what happened.

Don Munsil treated us to a quick review of his summer trip to Scotland. He told us about an exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland in Edenborough called Photography: A Victorian Sensation that featured a great deal of stereoscopic photography. In addition, he told us about the Swiss precision drum team at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo called the Top Secret Drum Corps.

Don’s book reviews included a German paperback about the Kaiser Panorama, and 3D Berlin (sorry, no link). His new disk acquisitions include The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet (Amazon disk and filmmaker interview) from the same guy that gave us Delicatessen and Amalie. He also pointed out the wide variety of 3D BluRay disks with David Attenborough available through Amazon.co.uk. Phyllis Maslin introduced us to a special disk called 3D Rarities that was featured at this year’s NSA convention in Salt Lake City.

We started collecting club dues for PSSCC ($30/year). If you missed the September meeting, you can catch up at next month’s meeting.

Joan Story told us that she’s preparing to move into a new house, and decided to sell her husband’s collection of cameras. Her husband Joe, who passed a few years ago, was an avid photographer and collected cameras for many years. Joan and Joe have been long-time members and supporters of PSSCC, and she felt Joe would have liked to see the proceeds of the sale come to PSSCC. Joan graciously presented the club with a check for $4,000 to help support the club and to improve our 3D experience. Thank you Joan (and Joe) for this very generous gift! In future meetings we’ll discuss ways we can use the donation most effectively.

PSSCC_ISS_1stPlace_2015Last year, our humble Puget Sound Stereo Camera Club won first place in the Photographic Society of America’s International Stereo Club Competition. This month, we got a chance to see the certificate in glorious 4D right in front of our own eyes! For those of you who missed it, here’s a 3D representation >>

We saw clips from some of the disks that Don and Phyllis discussed, including a 1940’s 3D promotional featurette about the Pennsylvania Keystone Railroad, a clip from the BBC’s National History Museum Alive about archaeopteryx, and a great selection of 3D images from the Best of Stereoscopy group on Flickr. Next year’s NSA 3D-Con convention is in Tulsa, and we saw a promotional film put out by the event organizers that highlighted the photogenic side of Tulsa, including a surprising amount of Art Deco architecture.

Stuart Turley gave a live demonstration of how to use StereoPhotoMaker to remove the distortion we often see in photos of tall, vertical structures. Stuart agreed to write up the process to include in the “How To” section of our website.

It was a great meeting and a great start to our 2015-2016 season.

See you in October, when our monthly contest theme will be Orange.

 

By |September 13th, 2015|Club Meetings|Comments Off on September Meeting Wrap-Up